Page 58 of The Vintage Dress Shop in Primrose Hill
‘It’s good that Colin has a passion, just like I have my passion for vintage clothes and dressmaking,’ Cress said a little defensively. ‘Neither one is hurting anybody else and it’s good to have interests outside of your relationship.’
‘Of course it is,’ Sophy said quickly as she flung her bag down on an empty corner banquette before it could be claimed. ‘And you’re lucky. Not all of us have passions…’
‘You have passions,’ Cress said. She’d left the shop without taking off her work smock. Today’s was another 1940s novelty print, which featured apples and oranges cascading on a black background. Knowing Cress, she’d probably knocked it up in less than thirty minutes and could tell you to the exact year when the fabric was made and who had originally sold it.
Sophy didn’t have anything close to that kind of passion in her life. If pressed, she could still remember all the Spice Girls lyrics and word for word every argumentshe and Egan had ever had. But those were hardly ruling passions. Another reason why Australia beckoned. Maybe her passion would be unlocked there. God, it might even be bush-walking.
‘Well, I’m very passionate about having a g & t in the next five minutes,’ she said as Johnno made his way to them with a tray full of drinks. ‘I’m also very passionate about having a bowl of chips about an hour from now.’
‘Here you are, ladies,’ Johnno said. Sophy expected him to leave them to it while he commandeered the pool table as he usually did but, this evening, he sat down, picked up his pint glass and took an appreciative sip. ‘You can’t beat a beer after a hard week’s graft, can you?’
Which raised the question, ‘What do you do when you’re not in the shop?’
Johnno took another long pull on his pint. ‘Good question, Soph. I duck and dive. I wheel and deal. I go to see men—’
‘About a dog,’ Sophy finished for him. ‘Johnno’s always going to see a man about a dog,’ she explained to Cress. ‘When I was little, I was absolutely gutted every time he didn’t show up with a puppy.’
‘I always wanted a puppy too but now I spend all day in such close proximity to Coco Chanel’ – they both looked over to the next table, where the doggo in question was taking up a whole chair all to herself and drooling as Beatrice ripped open a bag of cheese and onion crisps – ‘I can see why I ended up as a cat person.’
Johnno had been listening to this exchange with a half-smile but now he put down his pint and looked at Cress. ‘You and Soph are so close and you’re on the payroll… I feel like we should get to know each other better.’
‘OK.’ Cress smiled nervously, because although their lives were so entwined, their families so blended, Johnno was always on the outside. ‘The spectre at the feast,’ Caroline would call him when he wasa no-show for yet another Christmas lunch, although he always swore blind that he’d be there on the dot of one. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘Well, we could talk about where you went to school and how you got into the whole sewing malarkey but that would turn it into a job interview,’ Johnno mused. ‘How about you tell me your top three chocolate bars? But if you like plain chocolate, then you and I can’t be mates. Bloody abomination!’
‘I hate dark chocolate,’ Cress exclaimed with great feeling. ‘When people say that, to lose weight, you should just have one square of plain chocolate to satisfy your cravings? How does that satisfy your need for a Twix? It doesn’t. Not that a Twix would make my top three…’
Cress was almost as passionate about chocolate as she was about vintage clothes and haberdashery and it warmed Sophy’s heart to listen to her and Johnno debate their favourite chocolate bars. Cress was such a huge part of her life and it touched her that Johnno realised that and wanted to understand Cress better. But once they were done bonding over Cadbury’s Giant Chocolate Buttons, which apparently tasted much better than the normal-sized buttons, Sophy was going to pin Johnno down (maybe even literally) about the paperwork he still hadn’t sorted out
Then, through the open door, in walked the sunshine: Charles in a cream suit and a brilliant smile. Just seeing him, backlit by the glorious early-evening light, scanning the crowded pub until he found her and his smile became even more radiant, was enough to make Sophy ride out a delicious shiver.
Next to her Johnno and Cress were still talking about chocolate and hardly noticed when Sophy murmured something about going to powder her nose. Only Phoebe looked up as Sophy squeezed through the gap in their two tables, but that might have beenbecause Freddy had come in behind Charles.
‘Oh God, he’s all I need,’ Phoebe muttered, rolling her eyes. ‘I’d love another drink if you’re going to the bar, Soph.’
‘Not right away. In a bit,’ Sophy said vaguely, then she hurried through the throng at the bar and into the tiny corridor where the loos were. It wasn’t the most salubrious of settings but there was Charles, leaning against the wall even though there was every chance he’d get dirt on his pristine suit.
‘And there she is,’ he said, in his purry, prelude-to-a-kiss voice.
‘Here I am,’ Sophy agreed. She was eager to kiss Charles; her memories of their previous kisses were already worn thin. But… ‘Not here.’
‘No, not here,’ Charles said, looking around. ‘It reeks of disinfectant and desperation.’
‘I am a little desperate.’ It really was like being a teenager again, with nowhere to go to get up to no good. ‘Outside?’
They slipped through a side door, which conveniently led out to a little mews.
‘Ah, this is interesting! This must be where the brewery carts would unload and send the barrels down through that hatch into the cellar,’ Charles said, pointing at a metal grille over the cobblestones. ‘Also probably where they stabled the horses…’
‘Charles, I don’t care about the historical antecedents of this alley,’ Sophy said, placing a hand on his chest so she could push him back into a little alcove between the pub and the small row of mews houses that had replaced the original stables.
He arched his eyebrow, of course he did. ‘Really? What do you care about, then?’
Sophy pressed up against him so not even the gossamer whisper of a single piece of chiffon could have come between them. ‘You kissing me. Me kissing you. Mutual kissing.’
‘Well, in that case,’ he said, his hands already spanning her waist.
She thought she’d memorised Charles’s kisses, but it turned out that memories weren’t any substitute for the real thing; for the touch and feel and taste of Charles’s mouth on hers. Sophy wanted to sink into him but had to settle for leaning hard so she could feel every inch of him pressed up against her.
